50K cubic yards of debris removed from Lake Houston

A Lake Houston debris removal barge heads back to the landing after collecting debris for about an hour on Friday, July 6, 2018, in Huffman. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials visited the site and observed the removal progress on a boat Friday morning. less

A Lake Houston debris removal barge heads back to the landing after collecting debris for about an hour on Friday, July 6, 2018, in Huffman. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials visited the site ... more

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle

Image
1of/14

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 14

A Lake Houston debris removal barge heads back to the landing after collecting debris for about an hour on Friday, July 6, 2018, in Huffman. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials visited the site and observed the removal progress on a boat Friday morning. less

A Lake Houston debris removal barge heads back to the landing after collecting debris for about an hour on Friday, July 6, 2018, in Huffman. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials visited the site ... more

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle

50K cubic yards of debris removed from Lake Houston

1 / 14

Back to Gallery

Close to 50,000 cubic yards of debris have been removed from Lake Houston in the last two months, marking a completed third of an effort to clean out a waterway which was completely swollen by Hurricane Harvey.

The effort to raise capacity in the northeast Houston lake began in mid-May and is expected to last between three and five more months, Mayor Sylvester Turner said in Huffman after a boat tour of the lake on Friday.

Since May, between 1,000 and 2,000 cubic yards of debris – or an amount that could fill 50 dumpsters – have been removed per day, the mayor said. Up to 150,000 cubic yards could be dredged by the end of the project.

Now Playing:

Close to 50,000 cubic yards of debris have been removed from Lake Houston, marking one-third of the way to cleaning out the waterway which was completely swollen by Hurricane Harvey

Media: Kaila Contreras, Houston Chronicle

“We anticipate that there’s a lot more out there,” Turner said. “This is a regional sort of issue and we’re all tackling it and we have to operate with the greatest sense of urgency.”

“If there was any, any need of a reminder, we got a reminder on July the Fourth,” he said.

Parts of Harris County received up to 7 inches of rain on the holiday, inciting worries among residents still struggling to regain normalcy after the August 2017 storm.

In the Lake Houston area, authorities estimated that 16,000 homes and 3,300 businesses were damaged by Harvey's flood, the Houston Chronicle reported in March.

“Every time it rains, people in this area are worried about the capacity of the lake and additional water coming into our lake and flooding our homes,” said Houston City Councilman Dave Martin, who represents the District E Kingwood area. “We can never let that happen again.”

Many post-Harvey efforts from residents in Kingwood and other cities adjacent to Lake Houston have focused on removing the sediment and debris that has lowered capacity of the waterway. That capacity has decreased by up to 30 percent in the past several years, Turner said.

The current debris removal project will only address Harvey-related wreckage. Continued funding in the Texas Legislature is important, however, in the completion of more flooding prevention projects, including further maintenance of the lake, said State Rep. Dan Huberty, of Kingwood.

“That’s going to be critical for us during these times,” Huberty said after the boat tour. “We’ve got tons of inlands, that if you drive around here in Atascocita, they’re all filled with debris, silt and sediment that’s built over the years. It’s not just Kingwood. It’s Huffman, it’s the Crosby area, it’s everything that touches the lake.”

The city of Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department is conducting the clean-up effort through a contract with DRC Emergency services, LLC, which is working on several barges to remove the debris.

The debris removal could cost between $8 million and $20 million, depending on the amount of detitrus collected. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay 90 percent of the cost, with the other 10 percent coming from the city of Houston.

Turner and several other city and state officials witnessed some of the efforts firsthand on the Friday boat tour, which took off from a marina in Huffman.

On the water, Turner and others saw at least two barges piled with debris, including large logs and even siding from homes. Plastic water bottles also floated around them on the surface of the lake.

Turner said it is imperative that the lake continues to be maintained to prevent flooding risks.

“If you don’t do the maintenance then you’re going to chip away at your capacity, create a safety risk and then you have a huge problem,” Turner said. “When you think of Hurricane Rita, Ike and now Harvey, all of that stuff kind of comes into this lake. And what ends up happening? Where does the water go? The water goes up and into people’s homes causing a lot of structural damage.”